State Testing Mandates Swell Summer School Ranks

Thousands in Georgia, elsewhere take classes to help gain promotion.
By Linda Jacobson

Thousands of incoming middle and high school students in Georgia will spend some of their summer vacations sitting at desks in hopes of earning a passing score when they take another crack at a challenging state math test.

The disappointing scores of 5th and 9th graders on tests they must pass before moving to the next grade are an example of the struggle some states are having as they try to meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act while raising their academic standards.

And Georgia is among a number of states where students often end up attending district-administered summer school programs because they didn’t meet academic standards set by the state.

Texas is one of several states in which summer remediation programs are specifically targeted to elementary school pupils who have not met reading targets by the end of 3rd grade.

“Our scores were pretty good this year,” said DeEtta Culbertson, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency. Results show that 93 percent of 3rd graders passed the state test. Still, that leaves more than 24,000 students who will need to retake the test to enter 4th grade this coming fall. The tests are being given next month.

In Georgia, the pressure for summer school enrollment has been especially intense this year because of the new Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, or CRCT, in mathematics. Fifth graders must pass the test to move to middle school, and 8th graders must pass it to advance to the 9th grade.

Almost 38 percent of 8th graders and about 28 percent of 5th graders didn’t pass the tests for their levels. That’s about 82,000 students for the two grades.

Students have been urged to register for summer school, which will be held at different times throughout the vacation months.

The 159,000-student Gwinnett County school system, the state’s largest district, was expecting this year’s enrollment to top last summer’s figure of 3,500 middle school students and 8,000 elementary school students.

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